[GRLUG] Firefox on an external drive

[Michael Mol]

On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 12:13 PM, Bob Kline <bob.kline at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 11:51 AM, Michael Mol <mikemol at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 11:37 AM, Bob Kline <bob.kline at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 10:35 PM, Tom Warren
>> > <tomewarren+grlug at gmail.com>
>> > wrote:
>> >>
>> >> As the user (non-root) can you list the contents of the Filesystem? Are
>> >> we
>> >> maybe dealing with an ACL?  Run "getfacl /disk2" before and after you
>> >> mount
>> >> the drive and post the output.
>> >>
>> >> Tom
>> >
>> > Before mounting:
>> >
>> > # file: disk2
>> > # owner: me
>> > # group: me
>> > user::rwx
>> > group:: r-x
>> > other::r-x
>> >
>> > After mounting:
>> >
>> > # file: disk2
>> > # owner: root
>> > # group: root
>> > user::rwx
>> > group::r-x
>> > other::r-w
>> >
>> >
>> > So the mount process does indeed change
>> > permissions, but this should not change a
>> > couple of key things:
>> >
>> > 1)  Konqueror works fine.  I can view the
>> > contents of /disk2 as expected.
>> >
>> > 2)  The permissions are 755, so I should be
>> > able to at least view the contents of disk2
>> > in any case.
>> >
>> > 3) I can view the contents of /disk2 one
>> > file at a time.  e.g., if I enter file:///disk2/myfile.html
>> > as the URL to Firefox, the contents are displayed.
>> > It's only when I enter file:///disk2 that I get a blank
>> > page.
>> >
>> > At this point it does seem that Firefox requires
>> > some kind of permissions that just aren't there.
>> > I tried changing "owner" to "me", but nothing
>> > changed - I still cannot view the contents of /disk2.
>> >
>> > I can view the contents of any directory owned
>> > by root on the primary drive.  Just not /disk2.
>> >
>>
>> I'm not sure if enumerating a directory's contents requires read,
>> execute or both.  Also, what steps did you take to change the owner to
>> yourself?  Did you use the uid= and gid= mount options, or did you
>> chown after the mount?
>>
>> Also try adding the mount to fstab with the requisite options to allow
>> non-root users to mount it, and see if that fixes it.
>>
>> It may be worthwhile to file a bug report with your distro's bug
>> tracker; They'll fix it locally and push the fix up to mainstream.
>> (Unless it's Debian, in which case they'll just fix it locally; Their
>> Seamonky codebase has deviated significantly from Firefox.)
>>
>>
>
> chown after the mount. I also tried "-o owner,group".
> This allows non-root users to mount things on /disk2.
>
> Indeed, if it's clear it is a bug, rather than something
> I'm doing, it's worth a report.  Some of the things you
> mention seem to require that the options be set in
> fstab, and I haven't played around with that.
>
> Anyway,  for now, with the simply mount I usually
> do for backups:
>
> mount -t ext3 /dev/sdb7 /disk2
>
> konqueror lists the contents of the mounted drive,
> Firefox does not.  Firefox can deal with items in
> the directory.  That's where it stands now.
>
> Some day I can try Seamonkey.  I use it on a
> machine running Puppy Linux.
>

FWIW, my mention of Seamonkey was in error; I meant to refer to Iceweasel.


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:wq